Fighting the wrong enemy.
Via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/achang/
Charles’ great post about the snide attitude towards all things Microsoft, has spurred me into writing the Microsoft post I’ve had in my head for a little while now. While I’m as prone to Apple fanboyisms as anyone, I’ve often thought that history will have a very different view of Microsoft and Apple.
Without doubt, Apple have built amazing products and have revolutionized several categories. But Microsoft, more than anyone else, can really claim to have created an industry. Were it not for their stated goal of “putting a computer on every desk and in every home,” it’s questionable whether the Web we know today would have evolved. Even though Microsoft has often been single-minded and perhaps ruthless about its success, it has always recognised, very clearly, that its success depends upon the success of its partners. Microsoft regularly talks about the ecosystem it has created, a series of dependent industries and partners many times the size of Microsoft.
What I think often gets forgotten about Microsoft is that its business and its brand are essentially built upon the themes of expansiveness and interconnectedness. It is in business to make the world larger not smaller, it is in business to bring us together not to separate us and the more it can do either of these things the more money it is able to make.
Compare this with the business and brand of Apple. For many years their unofficial mission was to create the “Computer for the rest of us.” More recently they’ve urged us to “Think different.” Apple is not in the business of putting a computer on everyone’s desk, they’d rather sell higher margin products to an exclusive, elite few. They have created success for themselves by vertically-integrating many parts of their business, famously controlling the hardware, software, applications and the distribution channel.
Therefore I think it’s fair to say that their brand and business are built upon themes of exclusiveness and separation. They are in business to make the world smaller, to reinforce the difference between us and them and the more they can do this the more money they make.
It’s ironic and also sad then that, in today’s world where we are looking, more than ever before, to be connected, to create opportunities to push boundaries further out, Microsoft has resorted to highlighting the differences between us and them (YouTube link). Is there nothing more to be done? Are there no bigger challenges for Microsoft to attack?
Apple may win when the world gets smaller, but in the end we all lose. I want, and we need the old Microsoft back!
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Tags: interconnectedness
